Video: Camera Raw 5.0

Now let's turn our attention to Camera Raw, which is that module that runs inside Photoshop and the Bridge, that allows you to develop images that are captured in your digital camera's raw file format. Every version of Photoshop includes a new version of Camera Raw and CS4 is no exception. Photoshop CS4 ships with Camera Raw 5, which allows you to apply independent color modifications to selective portions of an image either using a Brush style tool or a Graduated Filter, and I will show you what I mean.

In Photoshop CS4 New Features, leading industry expert Deke McClelland covers the latest developments in Adobe's powerhouse image editor, Photoshop CS4. Deke explores the new tabbed window interface and the Adjustments and Masks palettes, the enhanced toning tools, content-aware scaling and the latest versions of Camera Raw and Bridge, which prove nearly indispensable to the digital photographer's workflow. From the interface to integration, Deke leaves no stone unturned.

Camera Raw 5.0

Now let's turn our attention to Camera Raw, which is that module that runsinside Photoshop and the Bridge, that allows you to develop images that arecaptured in your digital camera's raw file format.Every version of Photoshop includes a new version of Camera Raw and CS4 is noexception. Photoshop CS4 ships with Camera Raw 5, which allows you to applyindependent color modifications to selective portions of an image either usinga Brush style tool or a Graduated Filter, and I will show you what I mean.

I'm going to go ahead and open this DNG file here and this image comes to usfrom photographer and fellow lynda.com trainer, Chris Orwig.Now, I have balanced this image. I have gone ahead and developed the image toaccommodate the sky, but the foreground is much too dark in my opinion, and I'd like to warm it up as well.That's something that I can do inside Camera Raw 5, thanks to the addition ofthese two tools: the Adjustment Brush, which allows you to brush inmodifications, and the Graduated Filter, which allows you to applymodifications that have a gradual drop off.

Now, I will go ahead and click on the Graduated Filter tool first so that youcan see these are the settings that you can apply. Notice we have Exposure,Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, the usual bunch. We don't have Vibrance andwe don't have Temperature or Tint, and I will show you how we work around themissing Temperature and Tint options.Now I'm going to go ahead and switch over to the Adjustment Brush and you willsee the top options are exactly the same, so you can brush in these very samesettings. The only difference is that you also have these Brush Size modifiersright there, and you have got a Size value that affects the size of the brush.

Feather is your Hardness control, so 100% Feather is 0% Hardness, 0% Feather isgoing to be 100% Hardness.Then we also have Flow. The best way to think about brushes inside of Photoshopis that you are actually laying down individual dollops of paint, and Flowcontrols the interaction of those dollops; how opaque each and every dollop is.So if you take the Flow value down, you are going to be able to brush back and forth.I'm not doing it, I'm just demonstrating that. I could brush back andforth to build up the brush stroke. Whereas if you set this to 100 you aregoing to get a continuous brush stroke, which is what I want in my case.

Then Density is pretty much your Opacity value and this is a uniform control.So it's either going to be 10% opaque or 100% opaque.I'm going to go ahead and set my controls like so, so that we can very easilysee what this brush looks like. So I will go ahead and paint across the image,and then I'm going to apply a silly adjustment, just so that we can see it,of 0% Saturation. So I'm just leaching out all of the Saturation inside of thisarea, and I will go ahead and brighten it up as well.So that's not really the kind of color that I want to apply to this image, butyou can see two things. You can see exactly where the brush is and what itlooks like, and you can see that these options right here are dynamic.

They affect a selected brush.Notice if I hover over this little pin here that's indicating the beginningpoint of the brush, then I can see what the brush looks like and then if Ihover away, I can see what the modification looks like.Now, if I were to start painting some more, then I would add to the brush. Oh,I might as well. I will brush in some more; I'm adding to the same brushstroke. Whereas if you want to create a new brush stroke you go ahead andselect this New option right there and then you brush in your new brush strokelike so, and this time I will increase the Saturation and I will increase theContrast and a few other options here in order to apply a completely differentedit to the sky area.

So you can paint in multiple brush strokes and you can switch between thesebrush strokes by clicking on them, like so. So notice that this black areainside the pin, that indicates that this is the active brush stroke and now youcan modify its settings, then you can switch back to the other brush stroke andmodify its settings.All right, I don't want the top brush stroke, so I'm just going to press theBackspace key.The other thing to bear in mind is that these settings right here are notdynamic. They affect the next brush stroke that you apply.So if I wanted to have a soft brush stroke then its not going to affect thisbrush stroke at all, even if its selected, I'm not going to change this brushstroke, it would be the next brush stroke that I draw, like so.

All right. I don't want either of these brush strokes it turns out. So rightnow they are all one brush stroke, because I just had the Add radio buttonturned on. I'm going to go ahead and make sure that this pin is active, then Iwill press the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac in order to deletethose brush strokes.Instead, I'm going to correct this image with a Graduated Filter, because wehave basically a gradation of darkness that declines as we get closer to thecar. So that's what I'm trying to compensate for.So I will grab this Graduated Filter tool and then I will drag from the lowerleft corner of the image upward into the right. You can see that I have got agreen circle with a green dotted line and a red circle with a red dotted line.

The green circle and of course its dotted line indicate the beginning of theeffect and the red circle and its dotted line indicate the end of the effect.So I want to match the red dotted line with the horizon, like so, and then I'mjust going to take it up just a little bit so that we have a little extrawiggle room there. So now the effect begins down here in the lower left regionand ends up here in this region, and it goes all the way across these lines,these horizon lines.Now to apply our Settings. So I have got some interesting settings here. I wantto go ahead and raise this Exposure value, let's say all the way to 1. Then Iwill take the Brightness value down a little bit, and I will take the Contrastvalue up, and I want to definitely have a little bit more Saturation than None,so I will take this value up to let's say +10, Clarity, maybe +20.

Now, I was telling you that we don't have Temperature and Tint controls insteadwhat we have is this Color control right there, that allows us to warm up theimage or cool down the image, or basically apply any color.So I'm going to go ahead and click on this empty swatch and that will bring upColor Picker. If I want to go warmer I would select one of these two yellows,if I want to go cooler I would select one of these two blues, or I could liftany Custom Color just by clicking inside of this Color Ramp here.What I want is this yellow to warm up the image, and then I will click OK inorder to apply that modification. Now, if I feel like I have gone too far,especially with the Saturation value, I will go ahead and take that value downa little bit, like so, and now let's get a sense of what we have done.

I will turn off Show Overlay, so I get rid of these green and red items here,but the effect remains. Then I will turn off Preview so that we can see thebefore version of the image, and then this is the after version of the image.Thanks to the fact that we can selectively modify portions of an image usingthe new Adjustment Brush and the new Graduated Filter tools here inside Camera Raw 5.

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